Palaces and Courts of the Exposition eBook

The principal lighting is by great clerestory windows
— great windows at the north and the south ends
— also by skylights.

The building covers nine acres, and is the largest
wooden structure in the world. It is about three
blocks long.

The statues as well as the reliefs are by Haig Patigian
of San Francisco.

Vigorous types like machinery itself are used.

The generation, transmission and application of power
as applied to machinery are most interestingly represented.

The decorated drums of the columns show the Genii
of Machinery.

The eyes of these figures are closed, reminding you
that power comes from within.

Notice how from any point of view your figures suggest
support at the sides of the drum.

The very position of the arms gives you a strong feeling
of support.

The figures on the spandrels represent the application
of power to machinery.

The figures on the pedestals represent:

1. “Steam Power” with the lever that
starts the engine.

2. “Invention” showing a more intellectual
type of face, carrying the figure with wings spread,
suggesting the flight of thought. This thought,
as it were, is above the world.

3. “Electricity” with foot on the
earth, suggesting that electricity is not only in
the earth, but around it. He carries his symbol,
electricity.

4. “Imagination,” showing man with
his eyes closed — seeing within. The bird
of inspiration, the eagle, is about to take flight.

The wings on the head suggest the rapidity of thought
or action.

Inside this great palace one sees the latest inventions
in machinery. Ponderous machines capable of shaping
tons of metal, great labor-saving machines, and all
sorts of electrical appliances. “Safety
first” is a pronounced feature of this exhibit.

Palace of Varied Industries

Architect — W. B. Faville of San Francisco.

The high walls, averaging seventy feet to the cornice,
with their respective buttresses, are strongly suggestive
of the California missions of the eighteenth century.

The “California bear” and the Seal of
California are in decorative and suggestive evidence
at the tops of the buttresses.

The green domes on the palace belong to the Byzantine
school of architecture, such domes as one sees in
the mosques of Constantinople and other Mohammedan
centers.

The windows seen in the corner towers are the same
kind that one sees used in the majority of mosques.

The beautiful central portal, facing south, is modeled
after the Portal of the Hospice of Santa Cruz at Toledo,
Spain.

It is 16th century Spanish Renaissance, known as the
Plateresque style (from platero, silversmith).

The columns suggest a wood origin and look as if they
had been turned in a lathe.